To consider contemporary art within the framework of municipal construction projects is a proclaimed goal of the City of Munich. According to the guidelines up to 2 % of the construction costs are to be spent on art projects.

Artists are invited to participate in municipal constructions projects like new kindergarten facilities, schools, municipal administration buildings, cultural buildings, subway stations, public green, rearrangements of public squares and in certain cases even sewerage construction. The contracts are normally assigned by the Department of Public Construction of the City of Munich. Since 1985, consultation and guidance is provided by the „Kommission für Kunst am Bau und im öffentlichen Raum“, a group of advisers in honorary capacity consisting mainly of external art experts. These experts are appointed for a period of three years by the City Council upon recommendation by the Department of Public Construction and the Culture Department of the City of Munich. Further members are city councillors of the leading parties as well as freelance architects. The planners involved are also members of the Kommission and have a vote.

Since the early nineties a growing number of projects was realized for which the description „Kunst am Bau“ (percent for art) is inappropriate. Norbert Radermacher’s „Pendelturm“ project for the Vocational Training Centre Bergsonstrasse, for example is rather an independant example of architecture. This applies to projects like the exhaust chimney for the Petueltunnel by Luc Deleu as well as to Vito Acconci‘s „Courtyard in the Wind“, where the courtyard is practically made to rotate with the help of a windwheel on the tower of the construction department. These are also examples of architecture rather than constructions at or on top of architecture.

When the question was raised some years ago how to integrate art in the Tradefair City Riem project, a study was commissioned which was meanwhile published under the modified title „Stadt.Kunst“ (Publisher Dr. Heinz Schütz). The recommendation of the study to establish a curator in the Tradefair City was taken up which meant that the power of decision was transferred to the Kunstkommission. Dr. Claudia Büttner has been in charge of the art projects Riem untill January 2004.

The same applies to the art project Petuelpark. The curator Stephan Huber (how is also a well known artist) was appointed within the framework of the „2 % regulation“ in Munich for the first time. Together with the landscape architect Jühling+Bertram and 12 international artists he was planning a highly interesting park project on top of the tunnel of the circular ring road. The participating artists are Barbara Bloom, Bogomir Ecker, Rodney Graham, Hans van Houwelingen, Harald Klingelhöller, Raimund Kummer, Alexandra Ranner, Roman Signer, Kiki Smith, Pia Stadtbäumer and Dietmar Tanterl. The project will be completed 2004 and opend at the 26th of June.

The Kommission’s attention is directed at the selection of the artists, in particular at the specific character of the corresponding locations which is determined by the functions and users. In this context the architecture’s reference to art plays quite a decisive role, the accent being on the location, as a functional social construct, as it were. With the works assigned in this sense in recent years the static conception of art was abandoned, however. A video installation by M+M in the entrance hall of the new building of the Kreisverwaltungsreferat is in playful interaction with the identity of the location, the lobby designed for the Corporation of Waste Management manages to include the workers and their waste disposal trucks, the installation of the elevated archives of the Szuper Gallery in the converted hall of Kreisverwaltungsreferat becomes the venue of a series of changing events for two years. The artproject “Theresienhöhe” was designed on public territory by a team of the Kommission headed by Dr. Heinz Schütz, apart from works mainly realized in context with municipal buildings. With the intention to create and reflect urban locations works of art are realized here at four different locations. The so-called Bahndeckel project, an open space in the centre of a future residential development, 50m wide and 300m long, needs to be mentioned in particular. Due to the location and particular static conditions it was possible to invite tenders for an international art contest where artists and architects are cooperating. Normally such a contest is publicized as a contest for landscape architects. The contest was won by the team of the artist Rosemarie Trockel in cooperation with the architect Catherine Venart and the landscape architect Topotek 1.

In the recent past it has been important to promote the acceptance of the art projects with the public and the users. It also seemed to make sense to define the programmatic reorientation which was initiated a few years ago and to mark a new beginning. Last, not least the projects supervised by the Baureferat were to be given their own identity and should be made communicatable. Therefore, the artist Adib Fricke and his The Word Company were asked by initiative of the Kunstkommission to develop a name for the Kunst-am-Bau progamme of the City of Munich.

QUIVID now stands for art projects at municipal construction projects.

—Dr. Heinz Schütz, from ➚ QUVID website, 2003